Three weeks before the Boston Marathon grabs the world's attention, a group protesting China's alleged human rights abuses plans to use the same Hopkinton-to-Boston route to publicize its cause: boycotting the summer Olympic Games.

Michael Morton

Three weeks before the Boston Marathon grabs the world's attention, a group protesting China's alleged human rights abuses plans to use the same Hopkinton-to-Boston route to publicize its cause: boycotting the summer Olympic Games.

Seeking to expose alleged abuses ahead of the games, protest supporters lit a torch in Athens, Greece, in August and have since carried it to Europe, South America and Australia. The group has chosen Boston and its marathon route to introduce its initiative to the United States and North America.

“Boston symbolizes the birthplace of freedom and liberty in the U.S.,” Gigliotti said. “We decided it was a nice fit.”

While he will have help carrying the torch, triathlete and marathoner Paul Guzzi, who lives in Franklin and works in Wellesley, will run the entire 26-mile route for the March 30 event. He volunteered after being told of abuses in China by his mother, who practices Falun Gong's tenets and became involved with the torch effort.

“I always like a challenge,” Guzzi said. “It sounded like a good cause.”

While the idea for the torch initially came from the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, a meditation practice banned in China, Gigliotti said the movement has come to include other groups and individuals concerned with issues like China's support of Burma, renamed Myanmar by a military junta accused of abuses, and of Sudan, widely condemned for its actions in Darfur.

According to Human Rights Watch, China restricts freedom of expression and religion, banning groups like Falun Gong. It has also cracked down on perceived separatists in its western provinces of Tibet and Xinjiang, according to the watchdog group, employing forced coercions and secret prosecutions or simply forgoing trials altogether.

While China had promised to improve its record ahead of the Olympics, Human Rights Watch complained in December that repression continues, with forced evictions for construction and the silencing of dissidents.

Gigliotti agreed that China had not kept its promise, attributing it to officials' fear that residents would speak out and embarrass the government, causing the leadership to lose face.

“Their biggest fear is losing power,” he said.

Baodong Wang, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., dismissed the claims made by the relay's organizers.

“We hope the American public will stay away from this so-called Human Rights Torch Relay,” he said, describing Falun Gong as an “evil cult” that warps the minds of its followers and has slandered Chinese officials with lies.

He called the torch event “one of the latest acts conducted by Falun Gong to try to make use of the Beijing Olympics games to attack and vilify the Chinese government.”

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